So finally the media is waking up to the reality of the government’s new welfare
to work scheme. The Single Work Programme (SWP), it turns out, is a top-down contractual model dreamed up in Whitehall and imposed with no consultation with any of the people who will be providing
or receiving the services.
It is designed to replace the plethora of little-understood New Labour work creation schemes and aims to simplify the process. Payment by results means that the companies who have won the contracts will only be paid once they have proved they can find people sustainable jobs.
Patrick Butler’s Cuts Blog in the Guardian has a brilliant dissection of the SWP and asks whether the Big Society is getting its fair share of the work from the new contracts.
The answer is that the contracts were designed in such a way that only a small number of large service companies were ever in the running.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in